World of Darkness - [Time of Judgment 02] - The Last Battle

by Bill Bridges (epub)

  A giant pincer slammed down onto the flagstones in front of her, causing her to ram her shoulder into the wall to avoid the sudden attack. She looked up to see a giant mantis-like creature dressed in black and gold robes, a miter on its insectile head. It was royalty of some kind, perhaps a count or marquis from one of the nearby duchies. The clacking of its thorax made no sense to her (she had never learned the spirit speech), but she assumed that it, too, wanted her fetish. The bane she had forcibly bound into the thing must be calling out somehow, giving away her presence. She put on another burst of speed and tried to stay ready for its next strike.

  When its other pincer came down, she dodged it easily and then leaped up the length of its arm in a single running stride, reaching its elbow before it could react. As it brought its mouth down to eat her—its clashing pincers large enough to sever her torso with one bite— she jumped again, landing on its head and knocking off its miter, the symbol of its rank. As it began to shake itself to throw her off, she drove a clawed hand straight into one multifaceted eye, shattering the orb like glass. It squealed at such volume and pitch that even Zhyzhak, well used to loud sounds, had to cover her ears.

  Its convulsions were too manic; she lost her balance and fell, barely grabbing the top of the battlements in time to keep from falling into another duchy and losing her way. As she righted herself, the mantis lord’s pincer came at her again. She barely dodged it, grunting as it scraped her thigh, and then wrapped her arms around it in a bear hug, twisting with all her weight and might. The lord couldn’t adjust its footing in time, and the pincer snapped, the carapace cracking and leaking a thick, vile-smelling goo.

  The mantis leaped backwards, stumbling over the battlements behind it, and fell into the neighboring duchy. A roar greeted its arrival, and the clash of metal signified a welter of swords and knives from the other side of the wall. Each duchy had countless legions, most of whom wandered aimlessly, desperate for any excuse for war. This mantis did not belong in that duchy and so was open game. Only Zhyzhak’s markings from the Green Dragon allowed her to get this far without raising a cry from the neighboring duchies.

  Zhyzhak quickly vaulted along the top of the battlement and then leaped back into the corridor. She put everything she had into running flat out. Now that the armies were alerted, she’d be mobbed within minutes— unless she reached the safety of the temple, which belonged to her tribe. The temple doors were near, hanging wide open. She barreled into the foyer and skidded to a stop across its slick marble floor just as a loud roar erupted behind her.

  She turned to see the roiling armies of bane-spirits halt just outside the doors, unable to pass the wards that allowed access only to the Garou and their allies. She sneered at them and turned to face the foyer.

  No guards ran to intercept her. A lone Garou sat on the floor by the stairs leading down. He wore his misshapen man-form, a shape from an earlier stage of human evolution, giving him the jutting brows and lean muscles of a cave man. He looked up as she marched toward him and gave a conspiratorial smirk, rising to greet her.

  “So, another comes to try her soul on the forge of fear, ” he said.

  “Shut up! I’ve danced the Spiral five times, you little turd! ” Zhyzhak raised her hand, threatening to strike him.

  His smile faded and his head hung low, like a child who has just been told a trip to Disneyland has been canceled. He sighed and sat back down. “It’s downstairs. You know the way. ”

  Zhyzhak grabbed his meaty ear and gave it a painful twist. He rose to his tiptoes to keep her from yanking it off entirely. “Who the fuck are you?! ” she yelled.

  “G-G-Galvarg” he cried, slipping from her grasp and nursing his hurt ear with both hands. “My duty is to lead any Gaian warriors to the Labyrinth. ”

  “Gaians?! What the hell would they be doing here? ” Galvarg sighed. “They used to come here full of pride and glory, hoping to defeat the Wyrm or free our tribe from its allegiance. ” He cackled, remembering past victories. “They always failed and joined us. To see them stumble from the Labyrinth, newborn madness in their eyes... oh, for the glories of yesterday. ”

  Zhyzhak wrinkled her brow. “They don't come any more? ”

  “No. The word’s out; nobody survives the Labyrinth whole and untainted. They don’t even try anymore. ”

  “Why don’t you find something useful to do then, asshole? ” Zhyzhak kicked the Garou, who doubled over, clutching his ribs.

  “Gakh, ” he choked out, scuttling away from his attacker. “Can’t. Bound. Duty.... ’’ He wheezed horribly and grimaced in pain, rolling around on the floor. In seconds, however, his shattered rib healed. He sat watching her warily, ready to bolt if she moved toward him.

  Zhyzhak spat at him. The fool had been trapped into some sort of allegiance to Malfeas, and now wasted his time waiting for Garou who would never come. Idiot. She ignored him and headed for the stairs. Flickering green lights could be seen reflected on the walls from some source below. She walked down the steps, reaching into her mouth for the fetish she had tied there.

  She paused as she came to the last step and looked at the strange patterns traced on the floor, pulsing green veins etched into black marble. There were no walls on any side, only mists deepening in the distance. The Labyrinth led in all directions. Only one path was the correct one, the one that would lead her to the Second Circle and from there to the Third and all the circles thereafter, to the fabled Ninth.

  She took the fetish from her mouth and examined it, still coated in saliva and a remnant of the poison she had vomited in the Green Dragon’s realm. She brushed the wet from its surface and examined it. The fetish appeared to be a simple Boy Scout’s compass, a cheap one for beginners. However, on its back pictograms binding powerful banes were carved. She popped the latch—a magnifier—and peered through its glass at the mists. There, to her left, was a red glowing light on the horizon. She spun in a circle, seeing the mists rise and fall to disorient her, but the red glow remained, a fixed point in the changing landscape.

  She threw back her head and roared with pleasure. The Eye of the Wyrm would guide her. In a place devoid of any consistency or stable space, the Eye of the Wyrm— Anthelios, the Red Star—remained unmoved. She would navigate by it, and so trace her path through chaos to its center, with no fear of getting lost.

  Zhyzhak wrapped the compass’s thong about her neck and carefully stepped onto the Labyrinth, in the direction of the Red Star. The mists immediately engulfed her and then receded, leaving complete darkness. She heard voices, distant yelling and screaming, and immediately recognized them as her own. She barked a scornful grunt, for she had experienced this before: the First Circle of Insight. Zhyzhak marched forward, peering through her lens, ignoring the apparitions and voices around her, concentrating on the Eye. She had already danced this circle, along with the four circles that came after; each was a requirement for attaining rank within her tribe. She could learn nothing more at this level. She sought the Inner Mysteries, the Sixth Circle and beyond. It would be a long dance to get there, but she could speed her progress by using her fetish to see the hidden path, the shortcuts through the Labyrinth.

  Zhyzhak drew her barbed whip and snapped it. Its crack echoed through the darkness, loud, but unlike her previous echoes in the courtyard, these grew louder and threatened to shatter her eardrums. She ignored them and snapped her whip again at the mists, tearing a hole in them as one cuts through a hedge. The tendrils of fog screamed as they parted, tom by the devil whip’s spirit powers, and she knew this was the right path—pain reveals all secrets.

  Zhyzhak marched forward, snapping her whip and tearing away more mists that blocked her path, laughing loudly with each step. She traveled a route no other Garou before her had ever walked, following the lure of the Eye, invisible to all sight but hers thanks to her fetish. Ironic that the secret of its making had come from White-Eye-ikthya, old and blind, but who could nonetheless see the Red Star. He had not meant to give her the secre
t of its making. After she had wrested it from him, he fled. His fear of what she could become with it made him seek his old tribe in the hopes that their power could undo what he had done. Too late. With his lore, they somehow managed to wound Grammaw with their Gaian spells, but they could not stop Zhyzhak.

  She was so exultant in her victorious march, cackling to herself as she swung her whip, that she did not notice the trail she left behind herself: a tom, trampled path of footprints and tattered mists that further unraveled as time advanced.

  In the depths of the Umbra, in places far from Malfeas but still connected by bonds of taint and corruption, ancient bindings began to fray. Barriers and pathways stitched together by the twisted logic of the Black Spiral Labyrinth began to come apart. Creatures tied to the essence of the Labyrinth wept and moaned as they disintegrated. Others, freed from what little bondage to order the Labyrinth represented, leaped from their cages and ran far and wide, spreading chaos and destruction.

  The old order began to crumble, and even the Weaver stumbled, sending shudders through the webs that bound all the worlds....

  A lone howl echoed across the snowy pine forest until the nearby mountain peaks swallowed it. Complete silence descended. Not a single bird croak or snap of ice-laden branch could be heard.

  King Albrecht cocked his head and listened for answering howls in the distance but heard nothing. He stood perfectly still, his tall, muscled frame a statue cloaked in thick furs, his hand gripping a sword hilt that jutted over his shoulder, its blade sheathed on his back. His white hair spilled over his shoulders from beneath a band of silver. He squinted at Lord Byeli with his single eye (of the other, only a mass of scar tissue remained hidden behind a rune-engraved patch). The large, white-bearded lord dressed in white furs stood in front of him, looking off at the mountains.

  “She’s talking about us, right? ” Albrecht said, his frozen breath misting the air before him. ‘“They come. ’ Who’s she warning? ”

  Byeli turned to meet Albrecht’s eyes. “Yes, she speaks of us. She is on that peak there, I believe. ” He pointed to a mountaintop visible above the tree line. “She is one of the warders placed at the edge of the bawn. ”

  “We’re at the bawn? ” Albrecht said, smiling. He let out a sigh of accomplishment as he punched a fist into a gloved hand. “Finally! I’m getting sick of all this snow and ice. ”

  Byeli shook his head. “At the bawn, yes. Its edge. Those are the Ural Mountains ahead. But we still have a long journey before we arrive at the caern itself. ” Albrecht’s eyelids lowered and his smile became a grimace. “How freakin’ big is this bawn? How do you defend something this huge? "

  “There is no one here, ” Byeli said, tightening his hood against a chill breeze. “A few villagers to the south, and the occasional hunter or trapper, but no one else. We ran off Stalin’s secret military projects long ago. The Urals are ours. ”

  Albrecht looked at the distant mountains, brilliant white and dusty brown in the mid-day sun. “It really is something out of the old days, isn’t it? Wild, forlorn and un trammeled. ”

  “Not all the mountains. We can’t defend the whole length. But here, in this place, it is pure. The oldest Garou caern from before humans built their first city. ” Albrecht heard grunts and wistful intakes of breath among the warriors strung out on the path behind him. They were his elite Silver Fang guard, the best of the best. Some of them were homegrown—from his own sept in Vermont—but others had come to stand at his side from Silver Fang septs the world over. Now, they followed him across the tundra of Russia to see the ancestral caern of their tribe, the Caern of Kingship hallowed by Falcon himself.

  They, like him, were dressed in thick, cold-weather furs with hoods, knit masks and dark goggles to dim the harsh snow glare. Two of them tended a sled filled with provisions, pulled by a pair of horses. Albrecht hadn’t liked that part. The horses would get spooked if his crew had to take their battle forms. Apparently, though, modem vehicles weren’t allowed. Not that the jeeps couldn’t go where they needed to, but their hosts at the caern wouldn’t allow such machines anywhere near their sacred home. In addition, there was some sort of ancient ritual crap about the “Steps of the Ancestors, ” a ceremonial journey by foot and sled in the same manner his kingly predecessors had traveled when returning to the Mother Caern. It was all legalistic bullshit as far as Albrecht was concerned, but anytime he brought it up, it seemed to scandalize Byeli’s sept, especially coming from a king’s mouth. So he finally shut up about it and went with the flow.

  Albrecht turned to watch his guards as they scanned the horizon, the sky and the woods around them. They were seasoned troops, ever alert for any sign of approaching figures, whether human, wolf or other. Scattered among his own band of twelve Garou were five scouts from the Lord Byeli’s Firebird sept, a pack called the Arrow’s Fall. Ahead of their entourage, well out of sight and sound in the spirit world, Nightmane ran alone, scouting the path for signs of any enemies and making sure that the caern’s spirit warders were properly appeased. She hailed also from Byeli’s sept, based back in Zagorsk where Albrecht had first arrived in Russia by moon bridge.

  “Let’s get moving, then, ” Albrecht said. “It’s time we got there already. ” He turned back toward the path and marched forward, nodding at Byeli as he passed him. The Silver Fang seneschal fell in behind Albrecht, following near enough to answer whatever questions the king asked of him. He was the king’s advisor here for as long as Albrecht intended to stay in the Mother Country.

  His stay had already proven to be longer than he originally intended. He had set up this parley with Queen Tamara Tvarivich months ago, but no meeting of two Silver Fang rulers ever went off without weeks of prearrival arrangements and logistics, trading ritual requests and concessions. He’d already made the first concession by agreeing to come to her, on her turf. She’d graciously accepted but had been pretty haughty about her own concessions, giving up precious little. The Queen needed Albrecht; he knew that. Her country was in ruins, only now recovering from an occult nightmare that had strangled all travel in and out of the region for years. The legendary hag Baba Yaga had ruled Russia with an iron fist, commanding legions of undead, and the crone had even managed to gain the allegiance of the dreaded Zmei dragons. But that was all past now; the Hag was dead, most of her legion destroyed or dispersed, and one of the Zmei had been slain by Tvarivich herself (with the aid of her massive armies, of course).

  The clouds had finally parted, letting in the sun and with it, increased freedom for the Garou. This meant, however, freedom also for the Wyrm beasts who had not allied with the Hag, and they were many. The Hag had her own plans and chained all her servitors to her will, which often differed from the best interests of the corrupters. New things were already slithering across the Mother Country and the Garou here had lost precious warriors in their hard battles. They would need help from abroad, not just from fellow Silver Fangs but from the other tribes also. For Tvarivich, that meant an alliance with someone influential, someone who could advocate for her in the New World. That person had to be King Albrecht.

  Albrecht couldn’t help smiling as he marched forward, snow crunching loudly under his feet. He almost hoped that something was lurking ahead of them, some monster to fight, to give him a chance to prove his hotshot New World credentials to all the stuck-up traditionalists. There was nothing like blood on a klaive to convince the doubters that you meant business.

  He glanced at Byeli and his closest guards, but they showed no signs of detecting anything unusual. He shrugged, stretching his shoulders, and accepted that the rest of the march might well be uneventful. At least he got a great view of the stark and majestic landscape.

  In preparation for their meeting, Lord Byeli and Nightmane had come to the States to instruct Albrecht on Silver Fang traditions from the Mother Country. They had also come on a mission of their own, one they had kept secret. They had unleashed their sept’s totem, the Firebird, upon Albrecht, and it demanded
to know his role in banishing and defaming Lord Arkady.

  That pissed Albrecht off. He’d put the whole Arkady affair in the past. Once he had claimed the Silver Crown for himself, it didn’t matter what happened to that traitorous bastard. He’d only spared Arkady’s life because Falcon advised him to (advised, but not demanded). Then the shifty creep had shown up again in Europe, apparently after making a new name for himself in Russia, claiming false credentials to new renown. But this time he’d damned himself by his own deeds for all to see. He had been spumed by the Garou Nation and disappeared. To everyone's surprise, not the least Albrecht’s, he then redeemed himself by wounding the Wyrm creature Jo’cllath’mattric, allowing Albrecht’s own war party to finally take the beast down.

  So, redeemed but dead, Arkady once again haunted Albrecht’s life, this time by causing a totem Incarna to doubt Albrecht’s word. Albrecht had set the matter straight, though, and Firebird did more than accept it: He granted Albrecht a rare audience with the Silver Crown itself, one of the secret powers that the great fetish held. Albrecht had been tested by the Crown and passed, coming to realize certain truths about leadership and power—and when to give it up in the natural course of time.

  The outcome of that event had been Albrecht’s increased comfort with his role. He’d always had some lingering doubts about his fate, fearful that he’d go mad like his grandfather before him—like so many Silver Fang rulers. Nightmane imparted to him what she had called “The Secret of Rulership, " a wild allegation that the Silver Fang tribe’s penchant for madness was a curse from Luna in her split personality as the Betrayed Moon. Apparently, some ancient Silver Fang king had really pissed the old crone off when he pledged his tribe to Helios’s servant, the Falcon totem.

  If this so-called secret was true, and Silver Fang rulers had no more than seven years before they began to lose their grip on sanity, then Albrecht’s own mind had to be compromised already. The funny thing was, he felt more sane and in control than ever before. Sure, he’d briefly wondered if that in itself was a sign of madness, but his experience with the Silver Crown showed otherwise—he had passed the test of power and proved that he could relinquish it if necessary. It was a tool, not a vital part of his identity.